Office Depot sponsored this post, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
I love having an office at home, and even though I’m not always there to sit at my desk I know it’s there to come home to. Traveling to the four corners of the world, spending time in the field, and pounding out blog posts from the neighborhood coffee shop are all great. Still, I do like knowing my home office will be running smoothly when I want to work from home.
That’s gotten a whole lot easier with Office Depot as my partner. They’ve got all the major worries handled so that I don’t have to! And as creative as I am with the big picture stuff, it’s the little things that can trip up a small home-based business like ours. You know, like if I run out of file folders to hold all my travel brochures. I can’t just walk down the hall and grab them from the big giant office supply closet. Mainly because we don’t have a big giant office supply closet in our home! Who does?
Keeping it Sane at Home
We travel so much for work, things can get a little batty. When we travel, I’m voraciously collecting brochures and pamphlets throughout the whole trip. I want to make sure I’ve got all the details I may need later when I start writing my travel stories. And traveling as often as we do, these bits and pieces of information start to pile up.
When I realized I could scan all these printed materials with my HP OfficeJet Pro 9010, it became a whole new ball game. Office Depot is helping us keep organized by helping to eliminate much of that mess. All my little stacks of papers from various trips have been scanned, digitized and stored in folders on my laptop. Now I can quickly access the information I need to write my stories without leafing through a stack of papers. I even started paying the kids to do this for me to save time. Life hack!
Even better, the HP OfficeJet Pro is first and foremost a printer the whole family can use. We can remotely send documents to print from wherever we are in the world – even from just upstairs. (I think our kids use this function more than anyone, truth be told.)
Supplies to Help Me Think
One of the reasons I enjoy working at home is the lack of interruptions during the day. I write more easily when my brain can just flow. Sometimes when I’m thinking through how to block a story creatively, I doodle. It’s funny, because it’s almost as though my hand moves automatically. I draw these fanciful shapes and patterns in all different colors, but my mind is completely elsewhere. As it turns out, researchers have found that doodling helps creativity and organization.
My doodling has made its way into my daily to-do list too. Each morning I have my handy dandy TUL planner in front of me. With coffee in one hand and TUL pen in the other, I plan out the details of my day in a very VERY colorful list.
Staying on Top of It All
Part of running a small business from home is the fact that you are the boss of everything. That means basking in the glory, slogging through the tough stuff, keeping on deadlines. Oh, and remembering all the things.
That last part? Well, remembering to order supplies is usually not on the top of my list. Like, oh for example ordering more business cards. Recently our family had plans to attend Comic Con – an event which was a combination of fun and some potential business. We remembered to get the passes, buy funky t-shirts to wear, even plan out what cool things we wanted to check out once there. But I forgot we were running near empty on 2DadsWithBaggage business cards. Yikes!
Scrambling over to Office Depot’s website, I navigated to the Workonomy Print and Copy Services section. A quick upload of my business card specs and a few clicks later, my order was placed. Of course, I opted for these to be delivered to our home but there was also an option to pick them up at the nearby store. They arrived in plenty of time, and we were off to get our freak on with the monsters and masses at Comic Con.
Office Depot is My Office Manager
They’ve saved my bacon a few times now, my virtual friends in Workonomy at Office Depot. Often when I get into the writing groove, I lose all track of time. I’m focused on spinning my story, capturing the essence of a place we’ve just visited or a new thing we’ve discovered. And when I’m in the zone, I don’t want to be interrupted by the need to run out and grab supplies.
Plus running out for office supplies can be just plain inconvenient. Knowing that I can order what I need from Office Depot online to be delivered to my front door the next business-day? Well that’s a no-brainer. (This happens more often than I care to admit.)
The convenience of jumping on the Office Depot website at odd hours of the night has helped me stay productive AND keep my home office stocked. Workonomy can also help your small business with tech services, from 24/7 remote tech support to computer services and installation, tech trade in and more.
You never want your small business to slow down because of tech problems, and Office Depot’s services are like having an IT person on call without the expense of an employee.
With all this productive time on my hands, I should be able to crank out twice the amount of work!
Oh no – what have I done?!?!?
Office Depot sponsored this post, but all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Pin it!
